“I Want Them to Tell Their Stories”
For 25 years, the Wheaton Football Ministry Partnership has encountered and participated in the work of Jesus through community service projects, testimony sharing, and cross-cultural engagement.
Words: Grant Dutro ’25
Wheaton football players painting a parsonage on the San Blas Islands, Panama. 2019.
Photo Courtesy of Capt. David Iglesias.
Now in its 25th year, the Wheaton Football Ministry Partnership is still helping football alumni who serve in a wide array of ministry contexts around the world. Wheaton College’s football players serve in domestic locations and international countries nearly every year to conduct manual labor, community building, and prayer with the local people they work and live alongside during the College’s spring breaks.
The partnership began in the late 1990s when Coach Jeffrey Peltz ’81 asked some friends to help remodel his house. While helping with the renovation project, one friend asked Peltz if he would be willing to join the crew on a mission trip. Peltz—who had been coaching Wheaton football for 12 years at that point—declined, citing a schedule filled with recruiting future players and training his current ones.
However, in the spring of 1998, the same friend persisted and again asked Peltz to visit Venezuela. In a leap of trust, Peltz agreed to a ten-day trip. Outside of summer breaks, he had never been away from Wheaton Football for that many days in his career. He also couldn’t speak Spanish. Yet the small town of Rubio, Venezuela welcomed Peltz with open arms. For a week and a half, Peltz helped construct additions to local school and church buildings, played sports with the neighborhood kids, and built cross-cultural friendships.
Serendipitously, when Peltz returned from Rubio, two alumni players asked if he had any connections to people teaching in international contexts. He put them in touch with Rick Befus ’77, who led the site in Rubio. Befus helped them land a two-year teaching commitment at Christiansen Academy in Rubio. In the fall of 1999, those players reached out again. They posed a familiar request with a twist: What if Peltz brought the current team down to join their work in Rubio?
“And I’m like, ‘Man, that sounds awesome, but I’ve never done that before,’” said Peltz. “‘I’ve never been responsible for going overseas before. I haven’t been overseas that much. How do I set that trip up and be responsible for all of that and raise the money?’”
Wheaton Football Head Coach Jesse Scott helping local Kuna men and football players put in rebar for the church they helped rebuild. Panama, 2016.
Photo Courtesy of Capt. David Iglesias.
After receiving the official invite from Befus, Peltz turned to Ward Kriegbaum ’64, who was serving as vice president of academic affairs at the time. An alumnus of Wheaton Football himself, Kriegbaum green-lit the idea (and even went on to serve on 12 different trips with the team). Then, in the absence of any office on campus dedicated to overseas travel, it was up to Peltz to rally his athletes and handle the logistics. They sent 25 letters each to friends, family, and churches, asking for financial support to fund the ministry trip. That spring break, in 2000, Peltz and 26 players flew to Rubio and devoted their days to church and school projects, as well as running a football camp for kids in the afternoons. On the first day, they had 20 participating children. By the end of the week, the group had grown to 125.
Even during that first trip, Peltz and his team were already experiencing miracles.
While the athletes played with the Rubio kids the day before they were supposed to fly back to Wheaton, Befus walked up to Peltz. There was bad news: The team’s plane, scheduled to leave the following day, was in the shop for unexpected but crucial repairs. With oncoming inclement weather, it was possible the team would be stuck in Venezuela for several weeks. “So what’s the good news?” Peltz asked, and Befus revealed there was a flight leaving in a few hours—with 26 seats open.
“That’s the number of guys we had on our trip,” said Peltz. “The exact amount. And I said, ‘I guess we’re leaving today.’”
That trip changed the trajectory of Wheaton Football’s ongoing commitment to service. Immediately after this inaugural trip, one player asked, “Peltz, where are we going next year?”
“Dude, I haven’t even gone home yet—haven’t seen my wife, my kids,” Peltz replied.
The following year, Peltz took 43 players to Senegal, where they met with missionary and Wheaton Football alumnus Rod Duttweiler ’87. Then 56 players went to Romania, serving with former track and football coach Don “Bubba” Church ’57. Subsequent years have seen more and more players participate in the trip, traveling to a growing number of locations domestically and in over 20 countries: Senegal, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mauritania, South Africa, Botswana, Haiti, Macedonia, and more.
In 2023, WFMP traveled to Ecuador to partner with Doug Darr ’80 and Extreme Response International. Wheaton Football players were tasked with demolishing an old building to make room for school classrooms. Twenty-two players and coaches spent the week hauling 30-60-pound boulders up hills, wheelbarrowing hundreds of bags of concrete, sand, and dirt; and digging six-foot-deep trenches.
They worked alongside three Ecuadorians who were originally the only ones on the job. The task would have taken the three builders several months to complete, but after the spring break week was up, “they couldn’t stop talking about how the work our guys did alongside them put them three months ahead of their schedule,” said Peltz. “And the team in Ecuador actually finished the whole building before school started this last fall, which was really cool to see.”
Always seeking further opportunities for relationship-building, even after hours of grueling physical labor, the players and coaches would spend their afternoons with children at a local foster care home. On their last night, Peltz asked the players to discuss the hardest part of their week. “Every single one of them agreed that saying goodbye to those 14 foster kids was the hardest thing they did all week,” Peltz said.
Wheaton football players building concrete blocks to rebuild a church on Carti Sugdub island, San Blas Islands, Panama. 2024.
Photo Courtesy of Capt. David Iglesias.
Ever since the beginning, Peltz has emphasized the value of storytelling in learning to walk alongside and serve the communities they travel to. It’s easy to reply, he says, when fellow passengers on airplanes ask why there are so many football players wearing Wheaton jerseys on the flight, “I play college football.” It is harder to communicate something bigger: “We’re taking our spring break to serve and share the love of Jesus.”
“Then you have a conversation and maybe you get to tell your story,” Peltz said. “That’s ultimately what I want my athletes to receive and learn: I want them to tell their stories. The more they know each other’s and strangers’ stories, the more they’re going to be able to develop a relationship that’s vulnerable.”
Every night during a trip, players share testimonies with one another and, often, members of their partner organizations. Peltz is no stranger to the miracles God works during these sessions of shared processing and prayer, and testifies to countless examples of opportunities to share the gospel with fellow volunteers and workers.
One such account took place in 2021, with one group of athletes serving at Silver Birch Ranch in White Lake, Wisconsin, which is run by Wheaton Football alumnus Dave Wager ’78. Wheaton athletes worked alongside the football team from Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa. Although some athletes from the other team were Christians, some were not. The two teams gathered for each night of sharing.
On the last night, as conversation was dying down, the Morningside quarterback suddenly said, “So, what does this relationship with Jesus look like?”
“And I’m telling you what, inside, fireworks are going off,” said Peltz. “His coach and team spiritual leader, Dirks, led him to Jesus that night.”
Captain David Iglesias ’80, who chairs the Center for Faith, Politics, and Economics at Wheaton College, also testifies to the powerful work of Jesus that takes place on these trips, both through simply sharing embodied, manual labor and in intentional cross-cultural conversations. Specifically, Iglesias has helped lead three different trips to Panama, taking players to the San Blas Archipelago to serve the San Blas Kuna, the very tribe his parents served for 15 years. Iglesias is also a member of the tribe and lived there for seven years as a child. One of the first people his parents saw come to Christ is Lino Smith, now a pastor in his late 70s. Smith now serves as a contact for WFMP, finding churches and projects for the team to participate in during their trips.
Iglesias remembers the never-ending cycle of shoveling sand and rocks into five-gallon buckets and then proceeding to haul those buckets for thirty yards with an assistant coach or player. (“We should have had dynamite,” Peltz commented.) He remembers pouring dozens of gallons of Gatorade to ease everybody from the 90-degree heat. He remembers the tangible outcomes, such as building the pillars for a new church in 2016.
“The Kunas are really hard workers, and we were told on this last trip that normally Americans come down and watch the Kunas work, but now it’s reversed,” he said. “The church, the global church, has needs, and this is a very practical way to help them out.”
Twenty-five years in, Peltz and his far-reaching network of coaches, faculty, current athletes, alumni, and partner organizations continue to embody the motto of Wheaton College: “for Christ and His Kingdom.” Whether working out on the football field, hauling cement across Venezuela, constructing church cornerstones in Central America, sharing heart-to-hearts with teammates after a long day, or building genuine connections with strangers, they are learning how to serve well.
“WFMP is Wheaton football’s way of leaning into the College’s mission,” said former defensive lineman Josh “Buzz” Aldrin ’15, who also served as assistant coach for a couple years. “The heart of the program is to help mold young men who will go on to lead lives that are passionate for the cause of Christ. I can think of no better example of this than our spring trips.”
Football practice between games.
Photo by Kayla Smith.
